Читать онлайн «High Tide: How Climate Crisis is Engulfing Our Planet»
Автор Mark Lynas
High Tide
How climate crisis is engulfing our planet
Mark Lynas
For my family
Table of Contents
There was something different about the rain that night. I noticed it as I lay awake – a purposeful, remorseless drumming on the roof, as if determined to force its way into the house. It rained all night, the claustrophobic intensity of the downpour leaking insidiously into my dreams.
The next day dawned bright and even warm, its weak autumnal sunshine driving away the uneasiness of the previous night. But half a mile from my house, the Thames already looked very different. Instead of the usual sluggish flow, the brown water was racing angrily by. Small whirlpools and eddies played in the strong current, and freshly-torn branches floated past.
The wildlife too indicated that something was wrong: hundreds of earthworms, forced out of their holes by the water, were wriggling uselessly on the banks. Some of the lower watermeadows had been submerged by the rising river, and deep chalky puddles lined the towpath as I splashed through on my bike.
It was almost as a challenge to the elements that I dragged a friend’s kayak down to the riverbank, and – after a brief wobble of trepidation – launched myself into the water. The last thing I remember seeing, as I shot out into the strong current, was my bike propped against a willow tree on the bank.
As I sped downstream, it gradually dawned on me that I had made a mistake.
I couldn’t turn around without the risk of capsizing, and I didn’t want to find myself flung into the water so close to the weir. I had already taken the right-hand fork at the island, under the ‘Danger’ sign that warned bigger boats away, and could hear the muffled roar of the rapids ahead.A few minutes later I could even smell the spray. I eased closer to the bank as the weir came into view, its ugly steel gates fully raised to let through the maximum volume of the swollen river. On the right bank, under a grove of poplars, was the grey concrete memorial to an Oxford University canoeing team who had lost their lives in the same spot almost a century before.
As I should have known it would, the increasing current took me by surprise. I had aimed to pass opposite the weir by hugging the bank on the other side, and then continue on round to the main channel. But the tug was stronger now, and within a few seconds I was away from the bank and losing control. I tried to paddle backwards, but succeeded only in spinning round with a dangerous near-capsizing wobble. All the while the roaring waterfall moved inexorably closer.
